“Dentistry in the uncanny valley” is what Pink Tentacle calls its report on Simroid — a robotic dental patient with an eerily realistic appearance. And that’s pretty accurate. Well, a trip to the dentist can be like descending into the uncanny valley anyways, but this is worse.

Making her debut at the 2007 International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo, Simroid is actually a sister of Actroid (who has got somewhat better than when first invented a few years ago). Here is part of Pink Tentacle’s description and some video of Simroid in action along with other inhuman participants at the exhibition:

Designed primarily as a training tool for dentists, the fembot patient can follow spoken instructions, closely monitor a dentist’s performance during mock treatments, and react in a human-like way to mouth pain. Because Simroid’s realistic appearance and behavior motivate people to treat her like a human being, as opposed to an object, she helps dental trainees learn how to better communicate with patients … she has something the Actroid does not — sensitive teeth. Thanks to a mouth loaded with sensors, she knows when her dentist-in-training makes a mistake. And to express her pain, she grimaces, moves her hands and eyes, and says, “That hurts.”